Climate ethics principles

Climate ethics principles

Three principles on the cost of saving the climate

Saving the climate costs money. Not just money, but also time, material resources, jobs in certain sectors and, last but not least, nerves. This raises the question of who has to shoulder these costs. From a global and intergenerational perspective, this raises a problem of distributive justice. In climate ethics, three principles are considered debatable in this regard.

The polluter pays principle (VP)

The polluter pays principle (PP) states that those who have caused the damage should also remedy it. This principle, which is not only common in environmental policy (e.g. §13 BnatSchG) but also intuitively obvious to many, would mean that those responsible for climate change in particular are responsible for climate protection. In this sense, the VP is therefore a historical principle, as it also claims to include past greenhouse gas emissions. However, a closer look reveals some difficulties: Should all emissions since the beginning of industrialization be taken into account – or only from a year onwards from which one can no longer assume excusable ignorance of the effects (e.g. 1990, when the first IPCC report was published)? Should all emissions be weighted equally – or would it not be better to differentiate between vital subsistence emissions and luxury emissions? And doesn’t it actually contradict the basic idea of the principle if we are possibly held responsible for the mistakes of our (often already deceased) ancestors?

The beneficiary principle (NP)

It is precisely this last question that the Beneficiary Principle (NP) attempts to answer: According to it, it is not causation that is decisive for a higher degree of obligation, but the fact that one (has) benefited from greenhouse gas-intensive developments. It is difficult to deny that this is the case in industrialized countries with their relatively high standard of living. But the question of the extent of the spill-over effect on other countries is a tricky one: don’t all countries ultimately benefit from medical progress, regardless of where it originated? Even more difficult, however, is the question of how greenhouse gases can be quantified and historically located according to this principle (especially as the world of states has also changed since industrialization) – keyword “grey emissions”. Like the VP, the NP has to deal with historical emissions, which pose a number of problems – so much so that some scientists even advise against taking them into account for pragmatic reasons.

The solvency principle (ZP)

In this sense, the ability-to-pay principle (AP) is ahistorical: although in this context reference can be made to the often significantly higher emissions of wealthier people, the historical causation of climate change is not relevant to this principle. It simply imposes higher climate protection costs on those who are more solvent, i.e. can afford it more easily. However, it cannot take into account the generation of wealth – rich climate protectors would have to pay just as much as rich so-called “climate sinners”. This probably contradicts many people’s sense of justice. Conversely, the advantage of the principle is that it is relatively easy to implement – after all, it is not too difficult to measure prosperity.

One possible outcome would be to combine the practicable ZP with one of the two historical principles in order to achieve a fair distribution of costs. Whichever principle is chosen, in the end it will probably always come down to the richer North from a global perspective and, from an intergenerational perspective, the current generation being reminded of its responsibility to pursue climate protection much more intensively than before.

For a more detailed discussion, see: Herrler, Christoph (2017): Why climate protection? On the justification of climate policy. Baden-Baden (Nomos), Chapter IV.2.